Mongrel

by K. Z. Snow

  Erotic images rustled through Fanule’s mind. He wondered if Clancy had planted them there. He shivered slightly, remembering the glide of Marrowbone’s hands over his forehead and into his hair, over his body, over his ass and cock. Clancy was amazingly skilled.

  Then Fanule thought of Will.

  Marrowbone smiled, revealing a glint of fangs in the moonlight. “I can feel the desire beneath your skin. I can taste it on your mouth.” He stepped back. “But I know it isn’t for me. Simon will have the same realization if he goes near your lover. Not to worry.”

  Fanule couldn’t afford to worry. He had enough to be concerned about. Still, truth be told, he felt as if he’d left a small part of himself behind when he’d walked out the door.

  My second wing….

  He couldn’t think about that now. He couldn’t lose himself to fancy while merciless reality demanded his attention.

  When they arrived at the vine-covered cottage and its door creaked open, Lizabetta’s head floated out before Fanule and Marrowbone had a chance to step inside.

  She shushed the men as the door closed behind her. Moonlight seeped through her face, making it resemble a filmy oval of tissue bobbing on water. “I don’t want to disturb Twigby.” Then she smiled—a ripple in the tissue, an interplay of light and shadow. “Clancy, I didn’t get a chance last night to welcome you back. How very nice to see you again.”

  “And you, Betty,” said Marrowbone. “Isn’t it lovely that we can both dispense with pointless courtesy when we meet? I needn’t tell you how well you look or ask how you’ve been.”

  Lizabetta muted her laughter. “Nor I, you.”

  Fanule and Marrowbone sat on a battered wood bench just a few paces away from the door. “So, what can you tell me?” Fanule asked the healer.

  Her face hovered before them. “The cut on his arm was rather deep but clean and precise. Perhaps too clean and precise. I cleansed and treated and wrapped it. When I changed the dressing this evening, the wound looked better. It hasn’t begun to fester. I may not have to stitch it, just keep it tightly bound.”

  “Did he tell you anything?”

  “Nothing that made much sense. He kept saying, ‘They want to change us; they want to change us.’ He was quite miserable and close to being delirious. I didn’t bombard him with questions, just reassured him he was safe.”

  Sitting forward, his forearms on his thighs, Fanule idly tapped his fingers together as he thought. Finally, he looked up. “I’d like to talk to him, Betty. I hate rousing him, but I need to find out exactly what happened. And the sooner the better.”

  Her head swiveled to regard the door, and she sighed. “Well, he has been sleeping for hours, and he’s eaten, and I’m more than happy to keep him here as long as he needs looking after.”

  “May I, then?”

  “Yes, all right. Go in and wake him. Oh, and feel free to pour him some broth. It’s in the pot on the hearth and should still be warm.”

  As Fanule stood up from the bench, Lizabetta’s face rose to remain level with his. “Gently, Fan. I know he trusts you, but he’s skittish. I’ll stay out here with Clancy.” Her gaze moved to the side to regard the vampire. “He can tell me what happened last night.”

  AWAKENED by Simon’s infernal snoring, which sounded like the growls of a disgruntled bear rummaging through a pantry, Will got up from the overstuffed chair in Fan’s parlor. He felt stiff and sandy-eyed. I have to get more sleep, he thought foggily. I have to.

  Although reluctant to return to the Circus, he’d be leaving with Simon once the sun was up. Duty called, but duty had little to do with peddling Dr. Bolt’s medicine. Instead, Will needed to find out, if he could, where the elixir came from. And he must try to learn more about the Demimen.

  Forking his fingers through his hair, he shambled toward Fan’s bedroom. A moonbeam slatted by one of the front shutters paved his way. It seemed presumptuous to crawl into a bed that wasn’t his, but he didn’t think Fan would mind.

  After undressing down to his undershirt and drawers, Will crawled with a purr of satisfaction onto the plush, feather-stuffed mattress. He pulled the thin summer blanket over his body. Fan seemed to be all around him, enfolding him. But it was only the specter of his scent—mossy, with a slight tang of sweat.

  Will lazily ran a hand across the second pillow, the one on which Fan’s head had rested. Are we good for each other? Could we be happy together? It didn’t seem possible. Yet the impossibility of togetherness didn’t seem possible, either.

  Go back to sleep. You’re thinking in riddles. It’s too soon, anyway. You’ve only just become lovers.

  Simon had stopped snoring. Crickets chorused behind the light nattering of wind through trees.

  Could I work in Taintwell? Would I be accepted? Uncle Penrose always said I was never destined to lead a conventional life.

  Will didn’t lift his hand from Fan’s pillow. He let it rest there.

  Stop wondering. It’s too soon to wonder at all….

  THE diminutive figure on the sofa stirred and whimpered beneath Fanule’s hand.

  “Twig, it’s me, Fan.”

  Two specks of brightness appeared as Twigby’s eyes opened. “Am I home?”

  “No, you’re still in Betty’s cottage. She’ll be looking after you for a while. May I talk to you? Do you feel up to it?”

  “Yes, of course.” Clumsily, for his bandaged arm was in a sling, Twigby rose to a sitting position. The glow from the waning hearth-fire licked across the left side of his face. He seemed to have aged twenty years. “My arm hurts.”

  Fanule helped the small man right himself. “I imagine it does. But you know Betty will get it mended. And keep you safe.” Fan lifted a cup from the floor and guided it into Twigby’s free hand. “Here’s some broth.”

  “Thank you.” The Mongrel sipped as he stared into the cottage’s dancing shadows. “If only Pures were this kind.” The tone of his boyish voice had curdled.

  “Tell me what happened to you,” Fan said, trying to be both cajoling and assertive. “I need to know. Things are going to change, Twig. I swear they are. But first I need as much information from as many Mongrels as possible about any bad experiences with city dwellers.”

  Twigby sipped at his broth. Just as Fanule began to wonder if the injured man was still too dazed to converse sensibly, Twigby spoke. “He stopped me on Whitesbain Plank Road. The hunter named Piggoty. I’d just delivered eggs and onions and goat cheese to the Norward Hotel, and he stopped me and said I’d done something wrong. I think it had to do with taxes. He said I was in arrears with my taxes. And he took me away.”

  “To the Monkey’s Claw?” Fanule asked.

  Twig nodded. “That’s where it always starts, isn’t it?” He glanced at Fanule, his gaze bearing a residue of fear and bitter resentment.

  The chilling look was a spade made of ice, digging at Fanule’s memories. “And from there…?”

  “I was put in a cage. I don’t know for how long. Hours. Then someone came and got me. He said there’d been a hearing, and to pay for the taxes I owed, I would have to work.”

  “Where? What kind of work?”

  “I don’t know. They never told me. They never even took me to the hearing or told me how much I owed.”

  Fanule rubbed his face to relax it, smooth away the creases that had formed.

  “They just took me away,” Twig said.

  Fanule abruptly dropped his hands and turned his head. “Where?”

  “Beyond the city. Beyond the dunes. A plain building surrounded by other plain buildings. I’m sorry that I don’t remember much, Fan. They’d given me something to drink. It made me sleepy. And when we got there, to that new place that was nowhere, they put me in a small room and gave me a plate of food. But I saw the white powder on it, and I tried to eat around the powder. I didn’t trust it.”

  Suddenly, Twigby’s face gathered. The cup in his hand began to quake. A thin sheet of broth slipped over the rim and cascaded over h
is whitening knuckles. As if taunting him, the crackling fire spit sparks.

  Fanule carefully pulled the cup from Twig’s hand and set it back on the floor. He lifted the crocheted blanket that had bunched at Twig’s back and arranged it over his shoulders.

  “Take your time,” he said softly. “Anything you can manage to tell me will help.”

  Twig licked the back of his hand. “They took me to a different room, a horrible room,” he said, his voice stripped of what little vigor it had had. “Electric lights and two steel tables with porcelain tops, and a ghastly steel chair with projections for the legs and arms. And more steel tables covered with white cloths or with instruments, and men and women dressed in white.”

  A knot had formed in Fanule’s throat. Unblinking, he stared at Twigby. Don’t get sick, he admonished himself. Hold yourself together, stomach to brain.

  “There were machines, buzzing and thumping.” Twig’s voice was barely above a whisper now. “And glass-fronted cabinets full of brass bits and pieces in dozens of shapes, odd shapes, and thin, coiled cables and spools of wire, and jointed parts; levers and pulleys; maybe miniature pumps. There were trays, too, on wheeled carts. Trays full of bolts and rivets, small gears and springs.” He gasped, and Fanule flinched. “So much whiteness and glare. So much, it seemed to make a sound all its own.”

  “Did anybody say anything to you?”

  Twigby’s eyes shifted in Fanule’s direction. “That they were going to change my body to help me work better. And I would get to work with other Mongrels, and I’d be strong and happy, well housed and well fed. ‘Better than starving and shivering in Dunwood,’ they said.”

  “How—” Fanule reached down for the cup so he could take a drink. His throat felt packed with plaster of Paris. “How were they going to change you?”

  Twigby became more agitated. “From the inside out!” he cried, lifting his swaddled arm. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  Fanule went cold all over. “But… you must’ve gotten away somehow, before they… began their procedure.”

  “Oh yes. They thought I was stupid, but I proved too clever for them. I hadn’t consumed their powder. So I saw the knife slice into my arm. You’re a stinger, you fool, I told myself.” Twigby’s voice rose. “And I knocked that knife out of the surgeon’s hand and stung everyone else in the room and fled down the corridor and kept stinging whoever I had to until I got to the railroad tracks. I climbed into the boxcar on the spur. I’ll wait as long as I have to, I thought, just to be carried away from here. But I didn’t have to wait long. Not even overnight. The car coupled with the train, and I was moving toward freedom. But the train didn’t go far. It stopped at the Circus, outside the Gutter, and men began searching the cars. So I stung them and I ran.”

  Fanule’s mind raced to cobble together these pieces. He glanced at Twigby’s hands. Yes, that’s right, he was a stinger. He could deliver paralyzing pain through the tips of his fingers, or maybe through his fingernails. Fanule couldn’t remember which it was.

  “Why didn’t you sting the bounty hunter?” he asked. “Or anybody at the Monkey’s Claw?”

  “The hunter didn’t hurt me,” Twig said. “The officers didn’t hurt me.” He’d calmed a bit. Maybe telling his story had been a necessary purge. “I was distressed, but I didn’t become terrified or outraged until I was taken to that horrid room.”

  Fanule nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  Some Mongrels had superhuman abilities, determined by lineage, and those abilities were only activated by intense emotion. Fanule was an exception to this general rule. He could suck light at will, although it required considerably more concentration when his mind was at ease.

  “Can you think of anything else?” he asked. “Any other details?”

  Twig idly stroked the lower portion of his injured arm. “Not at the moment.” He gave Fanule an apologetic look. “I’m awfully tired, Fan. Maybe more will come to me when I’m feeling better.”

  Smiling, Fanule curled an arm around the Mongrel’s narrow shoulders and gave him an encouraging hug. “I understand. You’ve already been a great help, Twig. Thank you.”

  “Will I be staying here?”

  “Yes. For as long as you need to. The only folks who’ll know where you are will be the ones you want to know.”

  Twigby was reciting a list of names when Lizabetta floated into the cottage. “Uh, Fan, I think my guest needs to rest now. You can always come back. I’ll meet you outside after I see to Twig.”

  Her arms appeared in the air near the fireplace and gathered up more wood from an iron rack beside the hearth. Getting lost within the flames, those unburnable hands arranged the wood on the grate.

  Fanule got up from the sofa. “I’ll wait for you outside then.” After giving Twigby a pat on the back, he left the cottage. His mind had become a clicking analysis machine.

  Marrowbone rose from the ground, where he’d been reclining like a decadent phantom.

  “Well?” he said.

  “It’s bad.”

  “I figured it would be. Did Betty tell you the rest?”

  “She didn’t tell me anything, except to suggest I leave.”

  Marrowbone brushed at his clothing and made a few desultory swipes through his long hair. Bits of leaves and bark fell to the ground. “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the situation is uglier than you think.” With a swift, fluid turn, he snatched something off the bench behind him. It was the bottle of Dr. Bolt’s elixir.

  “Shit,” Fanule whispered. He immediately thought of Will.

  “It’s going to hit your lover especially hard.”

  Fanule’s stomach clenched. “That will give me even more incentive to do whatever needs to be done.”

  The door of the cottage opened. Lizabetta’s head, little more than an indistinct bubble at first, took on more definition as it moved closer to her guests.

  “Did you tell him?” she asked Marrowbone.

  “I’m afraid I’m too droll to do it properly.”

  Lizabetta shifted her eyes to Fanule. “That… vile potion,” she said, nodding toward the bottle Marrowbone still held, “isn’t just the usual sludge of laudanum and grain alcohol and herbal flavoring. It isn’t entirely plant-based.”

  Fanule sickened further. He dropped onto the bench and looked up at Marrowbone. “Is that why were you afraid it would make you ill, Clancy?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the Bloodroot Elixir—”

  Marrowbone slipped the bottle into his coat pocket. “Is all too aptly named.”

  The darkness rustled around them, thick with unseen life.

  “You know I don’t feed from Mongrels,” the vampire added.

  “I believe there are other bodily components as well,” Lizabetta said. “I could detect their presence.”

  “Oh, gods.” Fanule dropped his head to his hands. His worst fears had been realized. After a bleak, blank moment, he looked up at his companions. “But why?”

  “I assume it has to do with Mongrels’ physical assets,” said Lizabetta. “And powers. That’s the only explanation. Whoever devised this concoction must believe that if humans ingest a distillation of tissue and blood from superhumans, their bodies will be less vulnerable to various kinds of infirmity.”

  Her logic made Fanule grimace.

  Purinton’s attack on the unusual citizens of Taintwell was far worse than he’d imagined, and it appeared to be multipronged.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE tug was luxuriously slow and adroit, as if angel wings were stroking the core of him, coaxing, coaxing….

  But toward what? Will wondered as he was pulled along. Excitement began to build, taking him over. He wasn’t aware of himself. He was only aware of the feeling, deep and pervasive. And very persuasive.

  He awoke abruptly to a room packed with darkness and a pelvis packed with exquisite pressure. He was lying on his right side on a very soft bed, and someone was sucking his cock. Uncontrollably, he groaned, his
body bowing toward the source of its arousal.

  And what a lovely source it was. Velvety smooth, warm, moist. Snug but not still. Anything but still. The tongue cradling his shaft occasionally released it, but only to inscribe a serpentine path along the underside ridge or to flick the tender rim of the crown. The lips cinching his shaft occasionally released it, but only to nibble and pluck along its length. Then a hand closed firmly around the girth of his wood. With a weak cry, Will thrust into it and into the caressing mouth behind it. Fingers moved over his taut sac. Soon, they crept farther back.

  Awareness of his surroundings came suddenly. He was in Fan’s bedroom, but Fan was gone. The only other person in the house was Simon Bentcross.

  Will tried to say don’t—Simon was not his lover now; Simon had no right to do such things—but a low voice sounded before he could fully form the word.

  “Gods, I need this. I need you.”

  Fan was back.

  A finger slid into Will’s body just as that marvelous mouth made a prolonged draw on his cock. The fever inside him broke with a throbbing rush of pleasure. His eyes closed as the breath shuddered out of him. The force of Fan’s sucking and swallowing kept pace with the force of Will’s climax. Simultaneously, by gentle degrees, they diminished.

  “That was wonderful,” Will whispered. His body felt like a jungle vine, limp and humid and entwined with everything near it—the bedclothes, his undershirt, his drawers. He removed his twisted clothing and tried to straighten the covers.

  Fan caressed Will’s flank, nuzzled his pubic hair, kissed his belly. As Will buried his fingers in Fan’s hair, a sigh wafted across Will’s skin.

  “Come here,” Will said, sliding to one side and patting the fat mattress. “Get undressed and lay beside me.”

  “Gladly.” Fan, already undressed, eased onto the bed.

  Will rolled toward him. The press of Fan’s body, hard and strong beneath slightly damp skin, was provocatively sensual. Everything about him was that way. Everything about him persuaded Will to forfeit all caution, to give himself over to the unexpected passion that seemed to have taken over his life.